


Mechanisms

by PaigeTurner



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 08:58:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11272203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaigeTurner/pseuds/PaigeTurner
Summary: A mission brings out strong emotions in Natasha, but seeing her in distress is a trigger for Bucky.





	Mechanisms

It felt good -- weird, but good -- to have a team again. Bucky’s lips twisted into a smile, though the corners of his eyes still trembled. Steve was grinning broadly, flashing perfect teeth as he clapped Sam on the shoulder.  
Bucky’s stomach lurched; his smile faltered.  
Sam shook his head, but his face held a smile. He elbowed Steve in the ribs, gently, so as not to hurt his elbow.  
A flash of copper in Bucky’s peripheral vision turned his head. Natasha slipped past, skirting the group; their laughter and camaraderie echoed hollow in her ears. Chest tight, she closed the door quietly. She forced herself to breathe deeply, holding the air in her lungs until it soured and began to burn.  
She could still hear them, celebrating and congratulating each other and themselves on a successful mission. Her friends. The sound was a lifetime away.  
She could smell the tiny cell where they’d found the children. Decay and ammonia. Something dark and murky that rose from the drain in the floor. At night, it would gurgle with the voices of the damned. The chill in the air. The shackles bolted to the wall and a dark figure looming in the doorway. Natasha shook her head, trying to clear out the memories. She leaned against the wall, heart racing, and sank slowly to the floor.  
Bucky caressed the door with his right hand.  
“Bucky?” Steve cocked his head at his friend.  
He looked at Steve, fingertips leaving oily round marks on the amber veneer. “I need to talk to Natasha.” His hand slid down until it found the knob.  
The balls of her feet pressed into the floor, legs tensing, as the door swung open. She sucked in air between clenched teeth. Boots trod heavily across the soft carpet. Natasha made herself as small as possible, ducking her head between her raised arms to shield her face.  
Phantom cuffs encircled her wrists. A thin, suppressed whimper slipped from her lips as he touched her arm.  
“Natalia?”  
Her head shot up; tear-filled eyes met his. James. Maybe. Recognition didn’t temper her fear. She knew what the Winter Soldier was capable of.  
All the air had been sucked out of the room. Bucky dropped to one knee. When his words finally came, they staggered from his lips in halting Russian, accent coarse -- tainted by his American upbringing. “Please. Don’t look at me like that.” He pulled his hand back, it trembled in the air near her arm.  
Natasha shrank further, shying away from his hand. Her eyes stayed locked on his.  
“I don’t -- I didn’t -- please stop looking at me like that. Tell me you’re not hurt,” he begged.  
She wasn’t. This wasn’t real. The past couldn’t hurt her. Her lips quivered, but she couldn’t speak. She swam upstream against the flood of her memories.  
He fell into a sitting position, his hand landing on the floor between them. “I don’t want to hurt you.”  
“You didn’t,” she said in English. The language change shifted the energy in the air. “You didn’t hurt me, and I won’t hurt you.”  
James whimpered brokenly and shook his head.  
Natasha swallowed, looking at him through one-way glass. She could see him but he couldn’t see her. He needed comfort, she knew this. He needed her to drape herself over his shaking body and stroke his hair and warm him with her skin. She couldn’t. She needed not to touch or be touched. Her body needed to be her own. Her hand crept forward. Her fingertips alighted on the back of his knuckles. It was as much as she could muster.  
His hand relaxed. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against his upper arm, as though her touch could transfer through his skin. Tears snuck out between the tightly pressed lids.  
Natasha drew a shuddering breath. Her index finger twitched in small movements, patting the back of his hand with the pad. His hand tensed again, pressing into the touch, craving more. His weight shifted towards her. She almost pulled away. She stopped the movement of her finger; for a second the contact was broken as her hand recoiled. She settled it back in place, pressing the whole surface of her palm against him. Her fingertips curled over the edge of his hand.  
Steve supervised the stove. He stirred ground beef in a skillet while watching a pan of water. Sam stood over the cutting board on the other side of the kitchen. It wasn’t a large kitchen, they were back to back.  
“I think this cucumber’s gone to the dark side.” Sam frowned at the dark green vegetable, squeezing it gently. “It’s kinda squishy.”  
“Throw it out,” Steve advised with a shrug. “We’ll make due.”  
“You’re closer to the trash.” Sam passed him the cucumber. “You think they’re okay in there?”  
“Can you manage here if I go check?”  
“Is the water boiling yet?” Sam twisted to try to see the stove around Steve.  
“No.” Steve stepped aside.  
“I got this.”  
Steve’s grateful smile told Sam it was the right answer. He washed his hands and hurried to the bedroom door, only to stop short when he got there. Steve hesitated, then knocked softly.  
“Bucky? Nat?” He opened the door a crack.  
Bucky was curled up on the floor, weeping. Natasha was tucked in a ball, holding his hand from as far away as she could. She looked up at Steve.  
“He needs a hug.” She stood quickly. She gave Steve a wide berth as they traded places in the doorway.  
Steve knelt, draping his arm over Bucky’s shoulders. “What do you need?” He looked up at Natasha just in time to see her pull the door shut as she left.  
She leaned her back against the outside of the bedroom door, eyes closed. She worked to steady her breathing. She opened her eyes to see Sam, in the doorway of the kitchen, looking at her with mixed concern and pity in his eyes.  
Natasha pushed herself away from the bedroom. She strode across the living room, out of the reach of Sam’s gaze. He heard the front door open -- the screen door creaked -- and slam shut.  
Bucky jolted at the sound of a door slamming. Steve tightened his grip around him.  
“Shh, Buck, it’s okay.”  
Bucky shifted and sat up a little so he could lean into Steve.  
Sam dumped a whole box of pasta into the boiling water, stirred the meat again, and turned his attention back to making salad. Once all the vegetables were prepped, he put the whole bowl back into the fridge. He drained the meat and poured a jar of sauce over it, returning the pan to the burner and turning down the heat. He looked at the bedroom door.  
Bucky wrapped his right arm around Steve, angling his shoulder to exclude his left arm from the embrace. His trembling subsided. His breathing leveled out.  
“Do you know what happened?” Steve drew his head back to catch a glimpse of Bucky’s face.  
Bucky shook his head, his hair blocking Steve’s view. “Na-- Natasha, she’s upset? She wasn’t hurt, was she?”  
“No, nobody got hurt on this one.” He pulled Bucky back into his chest. “Everyone’s okay.”  
Bucky jerked away. “She’s not okay. She is hurt. Not where you can see, but--” He leaned out of Steve’s arms, bringing his hands up to his head. His fingers splayed from his temples back over his ears. “It’s like it was before.”  
Steve gently pulled his hands down. “Hey. Are you okay?”  
Bucky threw himself back into Steve’s arms. “You’re here,” he whispered.  
“I’m here,” Steve affirmed, stroking Bucky’s back.  
“Then I’m okay.” He melted, quivering, into Steve’s chest.  
“I’m here,” Steve repeated. He closed his eyes and settled into the embrace. He held Bucky, strong hands sweeping over his back in a slow, repetitive motion.  
Bucky’s trembling subsided. He lifted his head out of the crook of Steve’s neck. “Sorry.” He started to lean away, but Steve held him fast.  
“Are you okay?” Steve tilted his head, trying to get contact with Bucky’s eyes through the curtain of his hair.  
Bucky nodded.  
“You sure?”  
He finally looked at Steve and nodded again.  
Steve let go, but he didn’t pull his arms away. He was ready to pull Bucky into another hug at the first sign of it being needed. Bucky planted his right hand on Steve’s shoulder, using his friend as a brace to get to his feet.  
“I was supposed to be comforting Natasha, not falling apart and needing comfort myself.”  
One of Steve’s legs had fallen asleep. He shook his as he struggled off the floor. “I’ll check on her if you’re sure you’re okay.”  
“I’m fucking fine, just drop it.” He rolled his eyes as he opened the door.  
Steve frowned as he scanned the living room, following Bucky into the kitchen. “Where’s Nat?”  
“She left. Out the front. Stop,” Sam said quickly as Steve took a step towards the door. “I’ll go.”  
“I don’t--” Steve began.  
“You may have forgotten this, but I have a life outside of your hijinks. A life in which I run a therapy group for vets with PTSD. I think I can handle talking to a friend.”  
Steve closed his mouth and nodded, struck silent in the face of Sam’s undeniable qualifications.  
Sam gave a self-satisfied nod and pointed to the oven. “When the timer goes off, turn the bread over, give it five more minutes or until it’s golden brown on the edges. Then take it out and turn off the oven so you don’t burn the house down.” He pressed a potholder to Bucky’s chest until he accepted it, then washed his hands and headed out the front door.  
“He’s trusting me to cook?” Bucky looked at Steve.  
Natasha hadn’t gone far. From the porch, Sam could see her, by the pond, standing at the water’s edge. He picked his way down the hill, watching for gopher holes.  
“Hey.”  
Natasha turned to look at him, no trace of surprise. “Hey.”  
Sam kept his distance, just out of arm’s reach. “How are you?”  
Her lips twisted into a wry smile as she dropped her gaze to the grass. “I’ve been better,” she admitted.  
“I noticed.”  
Natasha’s shoulders rose and fell in a brief sigh, and she made eye contact with Sam. “Most of the time, when I’m being haunted by my past, it’s because of the horrific things I’ve done.”  
He inched a little closer. “Mistakes,” he said softly.  
“Every once in a while--” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “I get tripped by horrific things that were done to me.”  
He reflected on their recent mission. “Like little kids shackled in nightmare cells?”  
A shudder passed through Natasha. She looked skyward, eyes shining more than usual.  
Sam took another small step towards her. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
She shook her head. “No.” Her voice cracked.  
Sam pursed his lips and nodded. “Do you want dinner? I made spaghetti, meat sauce, salad….”  
Natasha stared at him for a moment. “Is there garlic bread?”  
“If those two yahoos don’t burn it.” He smiled crookedly.  
She looked past him to the house. “Well, there’s no smoke.”  
Sam’s smile widened. “Come on.”  
“Thank you.”  
He shrugged with just one shoulder. “If you need to be alone, I’ll get them to leave you alone. Just know that you’re alone because you choose to be. If you do want to talk, any one of us will listen.”  
“Talking about it means thinking about it. Reliving it voluntarily. I’ve tried that.” She shook her head. “A decade of mandated psych visits. And it helped, it really did. I have less than one episode, like today, per quarter and I only have nightmares when I sleep now. That’s probably as close to ‘normal’ as I’m going to get.” She shrugged. “What?”  
“What?” Sam echoed innocently.  
“You had a look on your face like you wanted to say something. Maybe about me being abnormal?” She leveled her gaze at him, cocking one eyebrow.  
“Not abnormal. Extraordinary.”  
Natasha’s eyes widened; the teasing expression vanished. She froze up. Time seemed to slow as she fumbled for a response. “Dinner’s waiting,” she finally said.  
Sam started toward the house, glancing over his shoulder to make sure she was following. “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable,” he said, knowing full well he had. “I just have a lot of respect for you. I don’t know the whole story, but you’ve obviously been to Hell and came back stronger.” He shrugged. “So that’s cool.”  
“Thanks. I have a lot of respect for you too.”  
“I hadn’t noticed.” He glanced back again.  
Natasha had stopped in her tracks. “I do.”  
Sam nodded. “That’s why you gave me birdseed for Christmas, right?”  
“I also gave you an iTunes gift card. The birdseed was a joke.” She frowned.  
“It’s fine,” he assured her. “Falcons don’t even eat that shit.”  
“I thought a dead mouse would be crossing the line.”  
Sam’s brow furrowed. “You didn’t legitimately consider the dead mouse, did you?”  
“I was raised by sadists, not feral cats.” She brushed past him, just her sleeve making contact as she strode toward the house.  
Sam shook his head and followed. Natasha hesitated at the door, allowing Sam to catch up. She wrinkled her nose. “How, um, how is--”  
“Bucky?” Sam smiled. “He seems like he’s okay. Steve took care of him. What happened anyway?”  
Natasha gave a slow shrug. “He has his own traumas, his own triggers. We don’t really mesh well in that regard.”  
Bucky’s drew in a sharp breath and froze when he saw her. Steve bumped against his shoulder, deliberately, hard enough to force him to exhale.  
“Are you-?”  
The drain gurgling. The cuffs bruising her wrists. The hoarse screams echoing off the damp walls. Natasha clenched her hand into a quick fist and released it. “Everything is fine. I’m sorry I upset you.”’  
His shoulders sagged and he shook his head. “I don’t want you to feel like you should apologize. I wish I could-” He waved his hand helplessly. “Ease your pain, I guess.”  
“Are you alright?” Steve interjected, literally stepping between them. “You left in a hurry.”  
“I wanted to be alone.” She drew her posture inward. “I’m okay.”  
Bucky peered around Steve. “I’m sorry too.”  
“Would you like a hug?”  
Bucky nodded eagerly. He stepped around Steve. He didn’t reach for her, just stood, his body tensed in anticipation. Natasha wrapped her arms around him, and he leaned into her touch. He took a deep breath, letting it out as a long sigh. “Thank you,” he whispered in her ear.  
Natasha released him and stepped back. “Dinner’s getting cold.”


End file.
